I am a searcher…
I always was… and I still am…
searching for the missing piece.

To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive. The unconscious will come to you if you have that gift that artists have. I only know if I’m inspired by the results.

I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be rewoven.

Even though what I do does enter the market, it doesn’t interest me. I am exclusively concerned with the formal qualities of my work. It is about the need and the right to self-expression.

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

I don’t watch TV. I don’t use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.

A work of art doesn’t have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn’t touch you, I have failed.

I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.

I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

Art is manipulation without intervention.

The subject of pain is the business I am in – to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

Look at it this way – a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.

My childhood has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.

Space is something that you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits.

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.

The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have
said.

When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I’ve always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it’s not a pin.

When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America.

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented – which is what fear and anxiety do to a person – into something whole.

I know that when I finish a drawing, my anxiety level decreases. The realistic drawings are a way of pinning down an idea. I don’t want to loose it. With the abstract drawings, when I’m feeling loose, I can slip into the unconscious.